


Apocalypses

by Iztarshi (khilari)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, low key suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-27 04:30:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21386131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khilari/pseuds/Iztarshi
Summary: Elias isn't the only one who has a complicated relationship with the end of the world.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 53





	Apocalypses

Peter knows the world could end at any moment from the time he’s a teenager. In this he doesn’t imagine himself to be so very different from his peers, he worries about cults and rituals, they worry about global warming and atom bombs. (Or maybe it is different, because their fears are Extinction and his aren’t, not yet.)

Most of the worlds a ritual could create would kill him before long, and that’s some comfort when he thinks about the heaviness and immediacy of flesh or wakes from nightmares of bugs squirming through his eyes. Of all of them he could tolerate Vast or Buried best, gods of empty spaces and cramping hiding spots. All of them except the Lonely, of course, but that one is his. It’s not a question of tolerating.

* * *

The Extinction scares him worse, shakes him out of fatalism. An Extinction apocalypse is the one he most fears surviving, being the last one left. He’s used to watching, the mixture of envy and contempt for the people unaware how small and unoriginal their lives and relationships are from the outside, the fear of both one day having that (entangled with another person, like being touched all the time) and of never having it (of course he won’t have it, he’s not meant for such things) fed to the Lonely by rote.

It’s not something he wants to lose, to replace with the emptiness of no one at all. No one to make a bet with, no Elias to make subtle overtures until Peter gives in and clumsily makes his own. No society to be aware he’s snubbing it, or care.

* * *

What would a Lonely apocalypse really be like?

Peter designs flats, each soundproofed and lockable, and wonders if it would be like that, everyone cordoned off into their own little world. He wanders through the Lonely in its closest form, the real world but without the people, able to touch objects but nothing living, and wonders whether it would be like that. Like a book of pressed flowers, everyone between their own pages. People untouchable, unreachable, but there. At least they would know, in some abstract way, that he, as a member of humanity, was absent. At least he would know that they were.

* * *

Peter burns out like any avatar after a failed apocalypse. Deep down he suspects it’s not supernatural (he’d never worked so hard on anything as he did those flats, never engaged with anything as deeply). But he can’t miss the stress of talking to contractors, learning architecture terms so he can design substandard kitchens, screening applicants. He is what he is and he is not a creature that should be engaged with anything but Loneliness.

* * *

Elias offers an apocalypse as if it should be a good thing. He’ll bring Peter’s god through too, he’s bringing all of them. Shouldn’t Peter want to help?

Peter does not want to help. He does not want the heavy flesh, the squirming bugs, the mobs and packs. He does not want the deception and distortion, the world is confusing enough. He does not want to be _known_, does not want an eye to pull things out of him he tries not to see himself. (Perhaps the only one he would really welcome is the one Elias most fears.)

* * *

In the end, caught between two apocalypses, he holds onto one last secret and chooses the one Elias wants. Perhaps it’s some impulse of loyalty, to a man who looked at him from time to time but didn’t bind him until the end. Perhaps it’s spite against the one binding him now. Perhaps it’s the Lonely he owes a chance to come into the world.

After all, he won’t be around to see it.


End file.
